Sustainable Income
Every other screener looks at what a fund has paid. This one asks whether it can keep paying. The core is coverage: how much of the return a fund actually produced over the last twelve months went out as distributions. Below 70% the payment is covered with room to spare; above 100% the fund is handing back your own capital, and the price follows. 72 funds, all paying at least 3% a year.
Coverage 26% · price +25.3% · yield 8.8%
Coverage 67% · price +6.2% · yield 12.3%
Coverage 66% · price +6.2% · yield 12.1%
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The three funds above are open to everyone. The full ranking — coverage, cover ratio, runway and the reinvestment needed to hold the price — comes with a free account. No password: we send you a sign-in link.
How the score is built
- Coverage — 45 pointsDistributions of the last twelve months against the total return produced in the same period. Full marks below 70%, nothing above 130%. It is the payout ratio of a share, applied to a fund.
- Price holding up — 25 pointsThe price return alone over a year. If coverage looks healthy but the price keeps falling, one of the two is lying, and this catches it.
- Regular payments — 20 pointsHow much the monthly amounts swing around their own average. An income that halves from one month to the next is not one you can live on.
- Cost and size — 10 pointsTER and assets. A small, expensive fund closes, and a closure is the one outcome no yield compensates.
- Cover ratio, runway, minimum reinvestmentThree readings of the same fact. The cover ratio says how many times the income covers the yearly fall in price. The runway says how many years the return built so far would absorb that fall, ignoring future income. The minimum reinvestment says what share of each payment has to go back in to keep the price where it is — the rest is yours to spend.
- Funds that pay too little are left outBelow 3% a year a fund is not competing for a place in an income portfolio, and its coverage would look flattering for the wrong reason: there is almost nothing to cover.
- What it does not knowCoverage is measured over twelve months, so a fund that changed policy last month still looks like the old one. And a fund with less than a year of history does not appear here at all.